Bumper harvest expected at Galana Kulalu scheme this week

Nyumba Agri general manager Jan Coertze [R] and Irrigation secretary Joel Tanui [2^nd R] at the onion farm at the Galana Kulalu irrigation scheme on Friday / BRIAN OTIENO

Nyumba Foundation’s Kishor Patel and Irrigation secretary Joel Tanui at the cassava farm at Galana Kulalu irrigation scheme on Friday / BRIAN OTIENO

Isaac Mbugua and Irrigation secretary Joel Tanui at the Galana Kulalu irrigation scheme on Friday / BRIAN OTIENO

Preparations are underway for the first proper harvest of maize from a 1,500-acre piece of irrigated land by Selu Africa Limited at the Galana Kulalu food security project this week.

Selu Africa Limited is a private firm that is commercializing 20,000 acres in the Galana Kulalu project under the Public Private Partnership deal with the government.

Selu Africa Limited CEO Nicholas Ambanya said the maize on the first 1,500 acres of irrigated land was planted in June.

“We will scale up to 3,200 acres by the end of the year and then mid next year we will be at 5,400 acres. We will progress in that manner until we get to 20,000 acres of land,” Ambanya said.

The CEO said they have begun with maize but will look into other food value chains including groundnuts, sunflower, ndengu, among others to fully utilize the potential of the Galana Kulalu scheme.

Irrigation secretary Joel Tanui said apart from Selu Africa Ltd, Nyumba Foundation is also working on the Galana Kulalu scheme.

Nyumba Foundation are working on 51,000 acres, and are on the development phase, doing irrigation infrastructure and trialing crops like maize, onions and cassava.

“We have seen that they have developed 3,000 acres currently under maize, cassava and onions,” Tanui said.

Selu have been allocated 20,000 acres initially and on the first phase are doing 10,000 acres, of which 1,500 acres of maize is ready for harvesting.

“In the next one week, Selu will be able to kick of harvesting of maize in the first two pivots. In the first harvest, we can easily achieve 4,000 metric tonnes which will get into local milling and into our local shops, so that Kenyans can have access to affordable maize flour in our supermarkets and retail shops,” Tanui said.

Nyumba Foundation’s Kishor Patel said they have 23 pivots installed in the entire farm but only nine are currently under irrigation.

In February or March, the whole 23 pivots will be under irrigation.

“We are planning to plant cassava, onions and maize for now,” Patel said.

Currently, some 500 acres are under cassava, another 200 acres are under onions, and another 600 acres under maize.

The plan, according to Patel, is to eventually have 5,000 acres under cassava, 10,000 acres under maize and 15,000 under onions.

Patel said they have a big challenge with wild animals, especially elephants, who invade the farms and destroy the crops.

Power is also another challenge because there is no electricity yet, so they are forced to operate machines on diesel generators, which is costly.

“We sometimes also have contaminated water in River Sabaki because of chemicals thrown in to the river upstream,” Patel said.

The road infrastructure is poor because it is still being developed.

Patel said Kenya is blessed with good arable land and favourable climate which when fully utilized can help feed the entire nation and have surplus food for export.

He called on Kenyans to do agriculture on a serious note.

“Government should give priority to agriculture,” he said.

Selu said they eventually expect to employ at least 2,000 workers by the time they fully irrigate the 20,000 acres allocated to it.

He said skills and knowledge transfer is one of the targets the company has to meet during the project’s lifetime.

“We have to educate and train the local communities through direct training. We will also be working with TVETs and other training centres to transfer knowledge and skills in modern agriculture to the local communities,” Ambanya said.

He said government has been very supportive of the project.

The State department for irrigation, Tanui said, has prioritized irrigation development across the country to bridge the food deficit.

“We have a clear plan as a government through the National Irrigation Sector Investment Plan on what we need to do in the next 10 years to ensure that there will be zero food imports in the country,” Tabui said.

Under the National Irrigation Sector Investment Plan, there are two pathways to bridge food security.

These include opening up the Arid and Semi-Arid Land areas, which hold 80-90 per cent of the potential arable land in the country, and corporate agribusiness, which is where the Public-Private Partnerships come into play.

“We are having a one government approach under the land commercialization initiative to bring on board all idle land within the country into agricultural production,” Tanui said.

The government has mapped large scale community lands, which were traditionally being held as ranches, and other parcels being held by government institutions with no substantive production activities on them.

The government now has a targeted program under the Public Private Partnerships, where investors like Selu can now lease the large scale lands for production purposes.

He said Selu will scale up the model next year to cover the entire 10,000 acres and eventually get to the entire 20,000 acres in subsequent years.

“In the next three years when the dam will be ready, we expect to have the entire 200,000 acres in this region under irrigation and this will substantially fully bridge the maize import in this country,” the irrigation secretary said.

The Galana Kulalu model is a multi-agency approach where different government institutions are supporting the project including the agriculture ministry, ADC, KWS, Rerec, Kerra, among others.

More than 1,600 residents from Tana River and Kilifi counties, where the Galana Kulalu project expands, have benefitted from jobs created.

Selu Africa Limited and Nyumba Foundation have at least 800 workers each.

“We call upon communities who are still holding communal land to engage with us so we can have large scale investors take up those parcels and open up production and subsequently food security,” Tanui said.

He noted that the government anticipates industries in the Galana Kulalu farm where value addition and food processing will be taking place.

He said although wild animals like elephants continue to be a threat to food production, Kenya Wildlife Service is working hard to drive away the wild animals to avoid losses for the private investors.

INSTANT ANALYSIS:

This will be the first harvest proper, although there have been two previous harvest which was on trial basis. Some 1,200 tonnes of maize was harvested in the trial phase in late 2023. The government plans to produce food on 200,000 acres initially before scaling up the entire Galana Kulalu scheme to a million acres under food production.